Anguish and religion

The Amer­i­can writer, di­rec­tor and pro­ducer Mike Flana­gan has be­come the guru of Net­flix hor­ror se­ries, with three con­sec­u­tive prod­ucts which have all re­ceived very good re­views. The Haunt­ing of Hill House, pre­miered in 2018, was the story of five sib­lings trau­ma­tised by the events that took place in the man­sion where they lived as chil­dren. A hor­ror story, with the cor­re­spond­ing scares, but also a fam­ily drama with very pow­er­ful char­ac­ters, both in their chil­dren and adults ver­sions.

The Curse of Bly Manor was re­leased in 2020, in the mid­dle of the pan­demic, star­ring some of the main ac­tors from the se­ries men­tioned above. In this case, the story re­volves around a young Amer­i­can woman who ac­cepts a nanny’s job in an Eng­lish man­sion, where she is soon sur­rounded by su­per­nat­ural phe­nom­ena.

Fi­nally, Sep­tem­ber saw the re­lease of Mid­night Mass, a more per­sonal and am­bi­tious pro­ject, which deals es­sen­tially with the themes of fear of death, sac­ri­fice and re­li­gion. The scene of the ter­ri­fy­ing events is not a man­sion this time, but a whole is­land: Crock­ett Is­land. Al­though there are no ref­er­ences to its ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, all clues sug­gest one of the small in­hab­ited is­lands off the coast of New Eng­land (in re­al­ity, the se­ries was filmed on a set built near Van­cou­ver, Canada).

Crock­ett Is­land is a se­cluded and sad place, where fish­er­men are los­ing their jobs due to an oil spill and the young peo­ple are leav­ing as the pop­u­la­tion ages. How­ever, one of these young peo­ple, Riley (Zach Gil­ford), is head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion, re­turn­ing to his par­ents’ house after four years in prison for caus­ing a deadly ac­ci­dent while dri­ving drunk in Man­hat­tan, where he had been a suc­cess­ful a stock­bro­ker. He is not wel­comed by the is­land’s closed and sus­pi­cious Catholic com­mu­nity, where strange events sud­denly start hap­pen­ing. This all co­in­cides with an­other ar­rival, that of a for­eign chap­lain, Fa­ther Paul. This priest comes to re­place his pre­de­ces­sor, old Fa­ther Pruitt, who had fallen ill dur­ing a trip to the Holy Land. Fa­ther Paul proves to be a very charis­matic fig­ure, im­me­di­ately re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion and help from Bev­erly, a re­pel­lent woman who de­spises all those who are non-be­liev­ers, es­pe­cially the Mus­lim sher­iff of the is­land.

While Fa­ther Paul fills the church every night with promises of eter­nal life, Riley, who had lost his faith, tries to rein­te­grate into the life of the com­mu­nity. He reini­ti­ates his re­la­tion­ship with his for­mer girl­friend, Erin, who, preg­nant and sin­gle, has re­turned to the is­land to be a teacher. This char­ac­ter is played by ac­tress Kate Siegel, Flana­gan’s muse and wife in real life, and also one of the stars of his pre­vi­ous two TV se­ries.

In the final episode, Erin de­liv­ers an in­tense mono­logue full of deep re­flec­tions on the mean­ing of life, in a plot that goes be­yond tra­di­tional ter­ror. The TV se­ries, praised by Stephen King and Steven Spiel­berg, also in­cludes shock­ing script twists. One of these, star­ring Erin and Riley, is con­sid­ered one of the best (and sad­dest) mo­ments of last year’s tele­vi­sion.

TV Se­ries